What should I expect when I am no longer a Faculty, Staff, or Student?

On the day your appointment changes, your license will change to an Alumni/Emeriti license and you will lose access to the applications that are only available through a Faculty/Staff/Student license. This includes all data stored in OneDrive. It is your responsibility to backup and save this data.

Note: Until account deactivations are resumed, all non-emeritus retirees and individuals who voluntarily leave or are terminated will receive an Alumni license.

Office desktop applications (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc...) will remain installed on your computer, but Windows versions will enter a 30-day grace period of full functionality before entering reduced functionality mode (read only). Mac versions will enter reduced functionality mode and will not have a grace period. Depending on when Office last performed its most recent activation/reactivation, you may have up to 29 days before the additional 30-day grace period begins.

When you enter this grace period, you will begin to receive the following message when you open one of the Office applications:

Can I see the number of grace days I have left?

Important: For Office for the Mac, Microsoft does not have the ability to confirm the number of grace days left. Office for the Mac will go into reduced functionality mode as soon as you no longer have a license for Office.

Run "cscript GetGrace.vbs". The program will return your license status and the number of grace days you have left.

How will Emeriti with paid appointments be affected?

Emeriti who have a paid appointment will continue to receive a Faculty/Staff/Student license. Emeriti with a zero-dollar appointment will be given an Alumni/Emeriti license.

How will UW-Extension employees be affected?

Individuals who work for UW-Extension are not eligible for a UW-Madison Office 365 Pro Plus license and will not be affected by a license change. UW-Extension Office 365 accounts reside in the UW-Extension tenant, not in the UW-Madison tenant.

How will a license change impact the Office 365 license I purchased from the DoIT Tech Store?

If you purchased an Office 365 University 4-year license from the DoIT Tech Store, your license will not be impacted.

How can I remove my UW-Madison account from my personal Microsoft account?

If you have a personal Microsoft account that uses the same email address as your UW-Madison account (e.g., john.doe@wisc.edu) to access OneDrive, you will need to remove your UW-Madison email address and replace it with a non @wisc.edu email address to continue to use OneDrive with your personal Microsoft account.

Please note, these instructions are for users who access OneDrive via a web browser. If you have access to the desktop version of Microsoft Office, you may have additional options to back up your data.

OneNote/Class Notebooks

For users who only want a copy of their notes, you can copy/paste the text into another text editing application:

If you are using a university computer that was provided by your department you will still have access to Microsoft Office applications that were installed on the computer by your department IT support while your Office 365 license is changing.